Business as Usual?

All this changed in 1991 with the arrival of "Smells like Teen Spirit," the furious little single that could. And that did chug its way to the top of the pops, clearing a path for the commercial emergence of alternative rock. Nirvana changed a lot of things, from the look, sound, and feel of pop music to the economics of an industry that began to take alternative artists like Belly, Juliana Hatfield, and Letters to Cleo seriously; and from the playlists at Top 40 radio to the commercial expectations people came to have for the bands that followed "Teen Spirit" up the charts.

If 1991 really was, as Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore christened it, the year that punk broke, then 1995 was a somewhat less promising hallmark. It was the year the dust from the Nirvana upheaval began to settle, the year the music business tried to put the pieces of its Humpty Dumpty industry comfortably together again, and the year that the promise of the cozy Alternative Nation gave way to the harsher realities of the Modern Rock Biz.

To anyone who had hoped that the ascendance of an underground inspired by the values of punk would change the way the music business functioned, 1995 was a discouraging year. The signs that Modern Rock had become the new Top 40 -- a place where novelty hits, moving units, and playing the game are more important than talent, passion, and artistic credibility -- were as ubiquitous last year as singles by Alanis Morissette and Hootie and the Blowfish. That's set the tone for what could well be remembered as the beginning of the end of alternative rock's glory days. The world "alternative" applied to big business, it turned out, is much different in theory than in practice.

Among those adversely affected by the subtle yet definitive shift in the climate of alternative rock were a number of artists associated with the Boston scene: Belly, Buffalo Tom, the Dambuilders, Juliana Hatfield, Letters to Cleo, Jennifer Trynin. Each, in their own way, had been groomed for success in the brave new post-Nirvana world. Some, like Belly, Juliana Hatfield, and Letters to Cleo, already had proven, pre-'95 track records. Others, like Buffalo Tom and the Dambuilders, had paid their dues and seemed poised for a breakthrough. And with Letters to Cleo and Belly having hit big on their first major-label releases just a year or two earlier, who was to say that Trynin or a band like Cold Water Flat wouldn't follow suit?

It may be too early to pass final judgment on discs like Letters to Cleo's Wholesale Meats and Fish (Giant) and Trynin's Cockamamie (Warner Bros.). New singles from both albums are due any day. And the Dambuilders' label, EastWest/Elektra, has committed to releasing "Drive by Kiss" as the third single from Ruby Red in March. But the stats are striking and simple. Belly went from a gold record and two Grammy nominations with 1993's Star to barely denting the charts with King, even after Rolling Stone ran a cover story on the band. Juliana Hatfield's Only Everything (Atlantic) sold roughly half of the close-to-300,000 that her Atlantic debut, Become What You Are, achieved. After having a big radio hit with the song "Hear & Now," Letters to Cleo had to struggle to keep "Awake," the first single from their new disc, on the charts. And Buffalo Tom made another great album that failed to push them over the top.

What happened and who, if anyone, is to blame? Or have expectations for alternative artists simply been blown out of reasonable proportion? As usual, these questions don't have easy answers. The record industry is a notoriously unpredictable beast, a $35 billion a year, fire-breathing Hydra that operates on principles few even pretend to understand. But '95 was the culmination of what most industry analysts admit was an unprecedented period of confusion and management turmoil at the world's five largest record labels. And the disorder that all the hirings and firings precipitated surely played a role in adventurous pop's bellyflop.

"The reality of the music business, and it's a complex one that I'll make simplistic, is that you get very few chances," explains Gary Smith, who manages Hatfield and Belly, co-owns Fort Apache studios, and heads the MCA-funded Fort Apache label that released Cold Water Flat's debut last year. "And when you get a chance it's because a certain number of forces that guide your career and amplify your impact in the world have lined up in some sort of resonant way. For example, your record-company people all have to be in place, your record has to be scheduled in a way that doesn't conflict with other releases, the world of radio programming has to be something that will tolerate your sort of music at that moment. And it helps if you're not sick the week your record comes out. There are so many factors, and once in a while they all click into place. That was the case with Belly's first album; there was a very fortunate confluence of powers that made that record happen. But in the last year it was very hard to be resonant because there was so much turmoil in the business."

Belly frontwoman Tanya Donelly sees company shake-ups as one of the peripheral reasons for her band's failure to reach a new level with their latest CD. "A lot of the people we dealt with constantly in the past at our label were suddenly gone, and everyone else was afraid of losing their jobs. It didn't seem like a situation that was conducive to working a record."

Just how direct an impact that had on the sales of Belly's King is hard to say, but Donelly is willing to shoulder some of the responsibility herself. "I knew it was going to be difficult because King just wasn't a singles album. And I think we all knew that if `Feed the Tree' hadn't been on Star, then that record wouldn't have been as big as it was."

Hatfield is also willing to take some of the blame for the performance of her 1995 release. "When Become What You Are came out, I had a taste of what goes on in the industry for a semi-successful band. And because of that I have to take some of the credit for my new record not doing as well. A lot of it was me turning down offers, not doing as much press, and turning down a lot of radio stuff because I didn't like being immersed in that atmosphere. Some people are just willing to deal with more bullshit than I am."

Hatfield signed with Atlantic when Danny Goldberg was president of the label, and she admits that he had a hand at pushing "Spin the Bottle" as a single two and a half years ago. After his departure, she began to temper her commercial expectations for her second Atlantic release.

"When he broke his contract and left the label, I thought, `Oh shit, I'm fucked.' I mean, I have no relationship with the current president [Val Azzoli]. I'm sure he's a nice guy, but I don't think he even knows who I am. So I was preparing myself for Only Everything not to do as well as the first one, and I consciously spent less money on it."

As the manager of Hatfield and Belly -- and a person who signs acts to the Fort Apache label -- Gary Smith has a special appreciation for the difference that having friends like Goldberg in high places can make on a disc's performance. "When you're signed by the president of the company, your record gets a much better shot. When the guy who signed you leaves the company, you're left kind of high and dry. It's not a pretty situation. And when the rest of the company is sitting around wondering whether or not they're going to be fired, well, that's very disruptive on their work day. In a situation like that, the company doesn't care whether Juliana fails as long as they have someone like Hootie making their monthly bottom line. I mean, the man at the top is looking at the bottom line and saying `Shift the resources from the Hatfield to the Hootie page' because every dime he sinks into Hootie comes back a dollar and every dime he sinks into Hatfield comes back 20 cents."

The situation Smith describes is nothing new or particularly evil, and even he seems willing to accept it as just part of the way the business is run. For a label like Atlantic, one Hootie and the Blowfish will cover the costs of 10 discs that don't sell a lick and still earn a good return. As Kevin March, drummer for the Dambuilders, puts it, "If a record takes off, then the company makes a lot of money. If it doesn't, then they only lose a little money. That's the worst part about it. You put your heart into a record and that's what it all comes down to."

The Dambuilders had made inroads on alternative radio in '94 with the song "Shrine" from Encendedor, their East/West debut. And the fact that Ruby Red was produced by Don Gehman (Hootie and the Blowfish, R.E.M.) added a nice touch to their résumé. But March found himself in an awkward position late last fall when, after touring hard behind Ruby Red, he realized Elektra was ready to give up on the album. Rather than throw in the towel, he started calling program directors and other people in radio that the band had met on the road. He asked them to listen to "Drive by Kiss" and consider playing it as a single. And he actually got a few stations to play the song. Then he approached Elektra.

"I do think the label were really ready to push our record, but they just gave up a little too easily," he explains. "So I got all this information together and I went to Elektra, got all dressed up and everything, and I asked them to release `Drive by Kiss.' At first the president of the company said no, we should just move on to our next record. Then I played the song for her and she agreed to release the song in March."

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